Soy Chai Bookshelf

Friday, January 3, 2014

Happy New Year, y'all! I hope you had a great holiday! In case you were wondering, no, I'm not dead, just a terrible blogger. TERRIBLE. I'll be honest: I haven't been particularly motivated to blog lately and as my pile of books to review grew ever higher, I became even more apathetic. The month-long slog called The Name of the Rose didn't help matters either. To be totally honest, I'm not really sure how much commitment I want to give blogging moving forward. The past few months have been the first time I've ever had a full-time job since I started the blog, and between work and all of my other hobbies (like actually reading), it's been hard to find time and motivation to blog. Going forward, I might stick more to mini-reviews and worry less about writing a certain number of posts per week. So that's where I am. Thank you ahead of time to anybody who still checks by.

In the meantime, books! It's the beginning of a new year, so I figured I'd join the bandwagon and put up a list of my favorite books that I read in 2013 (not counting rereads), based on which ones I gave 5 stars to on Goodreads.

Monday, December 9, 2013

I'm pretty sure that I had heard of The Dog Stars before the Texas Book Festival, but I didn't have much of an opinion about it until I saw the author, Peter Heller, speak at a session about reading as a writer. He didn't talk all that much about The Dog Stars but did talk about how he got his start in writing, a story that nearly made me cry (there was welling). I'm pretty sure that the moderator did actually cry, as indicated by the sniffly, tissue-muffled moderating that followed. I figured, if this guy can tell a story in a room free of ambience that moves everyone to tears in under five minutes, I should probably buy his book. So I raced to the book tent after the session, bought The Dog Stars, and was fourth on the signing line, ready and waiting for him to arrive. I told him flat out that I'd never read him before but since he made me cry, I was convinced. He laughed and wrote "You will cry here!" on the cover page, which was kind of adorable.

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all! I'm a few days late on this but I was obviously too busy cooking and gorging on Thursday to post then! I had a nice, quiet day with my husband and our friend Sarah who flew out from New York for the weekend. We spent the day playing games (Settlers of Catan, Monopoly, and poker), eating, watching Whip It while we digested, and then eating some more. It was delightful.

Friday, November 29, 2013

A couple of weeks ago, I participated in the Classics Spin #4, in which I made a list of 20 books from my Classics Club list and then was supposed to read whatever book had the number that the challenge facilitators chose. I was hoping for #1, Persuasion, but They chose #10, which for me meant The Call of the Wild, also known as the shortest book on my whole list (except, MAYBE, for The Giver). So I finished it in no time and then read Persuasion as well (review to come), giving my completion rate a nice boost.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

I have somehow gotten horribly behind on book reviews again. As in eight books behind. Oops. But never fear, fair bloggers. I took the whole week off from work for Thanksgiving (!!!!!) so I should have no problem accomplishing my various goals of sewing double-sided place mats (CHECK), sewing pillowcases, hand making all of my Christmas cards, cooking vast amounts of food, reading at least one more book, hanging out with a friend who's visiting for four days, and writing eight blog posts (soon to be seven!). Right? Right! I'm obviously not over-stretching myself at all!